


Muted Grey Nightmares

by Vonnix



Category: Beetlejuice - All Media Types, Beetlejuice - Perfect/Brown & King
Genre: Beetlelands Week 2020, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Established Relationship, Literal Sleeping Together, Multi, Nightmares, one bed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-06
Updated: 2020-09-06
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:01:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26320813
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vonnix/pseuds/Vonnix
Summary: Barbara rolls over in bed, unsure of what woke her up.Adam's still happily asleep. So it wasn't him ... but then what was it?
Relationships: Beetlejuice/Adam Maitland/Barbara Maitland
Comments: 6
Kudos: 77
Collections: Beetlelands Week 2020





	Muted Grey Nightmares

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Beetlelands Week 2020
> 
> Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy!

Barbara rolls over in bed, unsure of what woke her up.

Adam's still happily asleep. So it wasn't him ... but then what was it?

She holds herself as still as she can to make everything around her as quiet as it can be. The only thing she can hear is Adam's soft snuffling breath next to her. A fond smile emerges at it – but no. Concentrate.

_There_ .

A groan. Someone's talking.

Beetlejuice?

A look at the old Grandmother clock on the wall that Delia kindly found and hung for them one day after two hours passed and Barbara had only thought a couple minutes had gone by. It's three in the morning – what's he doing awake? Barbara knows that he talks a big game about not  _needing_ to sleep, that he's already dead and the dead don't sleep.

Barbara also knows he's completely full of shit.

“Adam,” she reaches over and pats at her husbands shoulder. Lightly so as not to scare him awake like _some people_ like to in order to hear his (admittedly very cute, Barbara can't help but think) shriek. She definitely didn't have to teach herself to walk more loudly so that she didn't scare him so often.

He wakes slowly. Blinks his eyes open. Screws his face up in a sleepy scowl as if to question who would dare wake him up from such a good dream. Barbara loves watching him wake up.

“Adam, honey, wake up,” Barbara whispers as she sits up beside him.

It takes another long moment for her words to penetrate the tired fog trying to drag him back to sleep but then all at once they do and he's awake. She can see the transition as she shifts her legs out of bed. He breathes in deeply, stretches his arms up, and he's awake.

He looks at her, about to ask for an answer, but the question – what's wrong, why did you wake me up – is answered before he can voice them. Beetlejuice makes more noises of distress.

He's getting louder. Pretty soon he's going to wake up someone else, someone less forgiving about it.

Barbara tries not to dwell on the few words she could make out this time around. She's hoping she misheard.

“Let's go,” Adam nods. Wordless understanding as he follows her out of bed despite looking tired enough to fall back asleep standing up.

Her husband is  _the best_ .

Now to help out their boyfriend.

They don't open their door, walking through it instead to lower the risk of the hinge creaking. It's been doing that lately when moved. Adam added it to his list of things to do but it's been getting longer and longer as he adds things to it faster than he's able to take them off. So the both of them know it might be a while before it's fixed.

It's okay, though. Beetlejuice has been badgering them about practicing their use of their ghostly powers. He _insists_ that the feeling of cobwebs and pea soup that comes with moving through solid objects will go away with time and practice – but Barbara isn't sure she fully believes him. As he's said before, they're very different beings. He's a demon. Adam and Barbara _aren't_.

The both of them poke their heads through the door that leads to the room that Beetlejuice claimed. It's little more than an overly large storage closet. It's also the only room in the house that Beetlejuice would accept as his own despite the offer of the guest room next to Lydia. He'd claimed it was too big, too open, had the wrong _vibes._

Delia had understood immediately and put a stop to anyone trying to get Beetlejuice to take any other room than the one he'd already picked. Barbara suspects it's why he made sure she heard him.

But that's a mystery for another time.

The small cot that's been shoved into the room takes up most of the floor space. No other furniture fits inside while still allowing the door to open for the three humans still living in the house and that, too, is something that Beetlejuice had insisted upon. When pressed about it in private by Adam and Barbara he'd admitted to it feeling safer than the wide open space of a full bedroom.

(it was all Barbara could do to stop herself from marching down to the Netherworld and giving Beetlejuice's mother a piece of her mind about all the issues Juno left her son with)

Beetlejuices hands twitch, his face crunches up unhappily, and a distressed groan keens out of his throat.

Barbara and Adam look at each other. A nod towards the bed. A sad smile. A nod in agreement. Then the two of them move fully through the door, onto the bed, Adam going to crawl up on the side of Beetlejuice that faces the wall and Barbara on the side closest to the rest of the room.

It's often and loud that Beetlejuice insists that the dead don't need to sleep. That they slept most of their lives away and so they get to take that time back when they pass over out of the realm of the living. It's less often that he goes on about the many benefits of being a born-dead demon, claiming that he can't explain everything away because it would lose him some of the mysterious aura that gets so many people turned on. One thing that he never talks about are the _downsides_ to being born dead. The short list that Adam and Barbara have is completely self written.

A need to sleep seems to be one of them. Not as often as humans – but he still needs it.

Another thing seems to be that when he sleeps he's a _heavy_ sleeper. Nothing short of an explosion or scream will get him out of bed and Lydia has tested that. Extensively.

So when Adam and Barbara crawl in with their boyfriend it's with the knowledge that it won't wake him up.

At first he starts to move even more. His fingers twitch, arms spasm, head shifts. A low pitiful keening comes out of Beetlejuice's throat before shuddering to a stop. He stops when Adam wraps arms around the demon's stomach and presses his chest close all along Beetlejuices back. He stops as Barbara wraps Beetlejuices hands around her own stomach and her arms around his head, playing gently with the hair on the back of his scalp in the way she knows he likes.

(the way she knows his own mother never did, the way Barbara's mother did whenever she felt sad or scared)

For a few long moments Beetlejuice continues to twitch unhappily. The nightmares assaulting his mind clutch onto his dreams with tight grips and the claws borne of horrific life experiences that no one should have to endure.

Slowly, though.

Eventually.

Finally Beetlejuice sighs, relaxes, and tightens his grip on Barbara while pulling them both farther back into Adam.

Barbara smiles, giggles silently, and carefully twists to look at Adam. Adam smiles back and the two of them cuddle in closer to Beetlejuice before closing their eyes and going back to a sleep that neither of them need but both of them still enjoy.


End file.
